Estela Portillo Trambley was a Texas writer whose work explores philosophical themes and yet is grounded primarily in the concrete reality of the people she grew up with along the border between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Portillo Trambley ventured into many genres, including poetry, prose narrative, and drama. At a time when Chicano literature concentrated on men's experiences, she wrote about women--not silent women who were appendages to their husbands or sons, but strong women who claimed their voices. Critics have focused on Portillo Trambley's feminist stance, which contested traditional feminine stoicism and submissiveness in favor of autonomy and a spiritual, unifying force. To some extent she also located her work outside of Chicanismo and the Chicano Movement. In a 1980 interview with Juan Bruce-Novoa she commented that "The pressure within Chicano literature is a verbal miasma of sameness; it has clung too long...